Next time you need examples of Cyberattacks, these are three of them… apparently… /ht @jeffreycarr

Personally, I’m not a fan of the term “cyberwar” as evidenced by a recent article that I wrote for Slate, however it is apparent to me as someone who specializes in nation state activities in this area and as the CEO of a company who’s clients are on the receiving end of some of those activities, that traditional thinking about warfare has been made obsolete by our dependence upon cyber-space-time. The environment within which war is conducted has been permanently altered since Clausewitz’ time. Sun Tzu would have been a better choice because he at least considers the superior option of winning a war without fighting. But even within the parameters that Professor Rid has established, here are three examples that fit the Clausewitz test of being lethal, instrumental and political:

One thought on “Next time you need examples of Cyberattacks, these are three of them… apparently… /ht @jeffreycarr”

Sure, there were computers involved. However, that’s because the targets were using computers to fulfil specific purposes (mail / messaging, calendaring, etc). If Pavlyuk was old-fashioned in his communications, a forged letter in the post would also have had the desired effect.

So, if there’s nothing inherently special or different about the computer-based mechanism which was subverted, then “cyber-whatever” is (depending on which way you want to cut it, whether for humorous effect or otherwise) either just “whatever” or one member within a set of “prefix-whatever”… so “Pavlyuk’s assassination was facilitated by message-crime”, and “the Iranians’ identities were revealsed by state-sponsored authentication-crime”.

Naturally, perfectly good terms have existed for a long time to cover these constructs more descriptively (forging, brute-forcing, etc) but I think “prefix-crime” and “prefix-war” might make nicely disparaging terms to alert gratuitous “cyber-” users ;-).

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